The developer of the ArcEm port to Amiga OS 4 has sent in a video of RISC OS 3 running on his 800MHz Amiga computer. He described the RISC OS 3 desktop as slightly sluggish, although games fare much better in the Archimedes emulator.

The video below shows Chris briefly using the desktop, fiddling with the Filer and Task Manager, before loading up the familiar Lander demo - including the inevitable crash landing that shortly follows.

An interesting point raised by this exercise is just how painless it can be to publish a video on websites such as YouTube and Archive.org. Perhaps more videos demonstrating RISC OS could be put together and used to show off the reasons why we stick with our tiny little market; as the saying goes, you can't be told what RISC OS is, you can only see it for yourself.

The idea of promoting RISC OS using video download indeed has quite some merit. Probably would opt for something other than the RO3 desktop to start with, but RO4.XX or 5.XX showing various activities (drag/dropping files, using draw, sample apps etc.,) would at least get the notion out there that there *is* an alternative and that it works.

And before anyone out there thinks that using video out there on the net is a fanciful way of doing RO promotion do bear in mind that often things *do* sell *precisely* because of this net based "word of mouth" as it were.

More on topic yes it's another emulator, at least as Amiga is not a widely available platform (not even in production ?) it is unlikely to "draw away" RISC OS users in the same way VA running on Windows might.

Here's an idea: Apparently Cineroma is getting close to being done, but the author is prioritising paying work (rather understandably). How about ROL pay for the right to exclusively distribute Cineroma, so the author gets money for his work and can complete it. This also gives us RISC OS users a media player, and also gives ROL a siginificant feature to put in the next release of Select and therefore start earning their subscription money.

Everyone is a winner except Iyonix owners, but I'm sure ROL could sell Cineroma as an add-on to RO5, giving them at least *some* access to that part of the market.

thegman>From an FAQ I located about Cineroma ([link]) the following is copied:

"--

Q. Will Cineroma run on an Iyonix ?

A. Yes.

--

Q. Does Cineroma use any features of the Iyonix ?

A. Indeed it does. It supports hardware overlays with the GeForce 2 (which means free scaling - with filtering - and free format conversion). Also there is some XScale specific code to speed parts up. "

So why does it have to be ROL to license and sell it, surely it would make just as much sense for Castle to make such a deal and distribute it exclusively ? Surely if you're prepared to accept an "exclusive license" situation wrt to distributing Cineroma from ROL then it should be just as welcome from Castle - or perhaps should we just let the author get on with it ?

Now Cineroma as a product (ie not bundled with either flavour of OS) might make sense. Perhaps Castle could 'incentivise' it and then spin it off in the way they have Oregano 3? That way, maybe we could all have it.

It still seems a shame to me that we can't have other CODECs for Replay but maybe that's old hat now. Not that a lot of apps support Replay anyway but that's a vicious circle.

In reply to thegman:
No! Cineroma should not be sold to ROL but best non-exclusively licensed for inclusion in Select 4 and to CTL for RO5.

Looking at the recent delays of ROL (recent measured in Select versions, no in time!) giving it to ROL might mean that Cineroma is delayed too much

As for IYONIX users: I will believe that IYONIX Select is available when it is on sale and even then the question is what does it offer and what features of RO5 might not be contained. I rather not be foced to buy a full OS just to get Cineroma.

If O2 is used as I believe in the Sony PS2 then there might be a reason we can't get 03.
If 03 is to be used in the Sony PS3 then this isn't available to Mid Nov06. Perhaps this is the reason we haven't got it yet?

hzn: Your idea is fine too, I was just thinking that ROL need to make a compelling reason to buy Select on Iyonix, and making it the only way to get Cineroma would probably ensure a lot of Iyonix users get Select. Somehow we need to phase out one strain of ROS, and RO4 is closer to being available on all RISC OS machines than RO5 is. I think giving one fork of RISC OS *major* features over the other would make sure the weaker fork would die off and we'd be left with one version of RISC OS, which is (I think) what we all want. Personally I don't care which strain goes forward, as long as one of them does, and Select seems to be more likely to turn up on Iyonix than RO5 turning up on the other machines.

Cineroma is heavily based on open source codecs, so I am not sure if it would be compatible in any way with an "exclusive licence". Apart from that, the idea that payment from RO Ltd. could allow anyone working in the "real world software development market" doing RISC OS work is ludicrous. If they had 1000 Select subscribers, their yearly subscribtion fees would not even pay for one man year of development.

Personally I would like to see RO5 die off, not because I dislike Castle, but I think it has less marketable features than RO4. Sure, there's stuff you can't do on RO4 you can on RO5, but at least it looks nicer and there'd be one OS on all machines.

adapt a mouse and keyboard logging program, so that it performs the tasks you did and puts them into a from of movie, this could then be used for demonstration purposes and as a supplement to online manuals and guides for day to day operations for noobs.

timephonix: I assume you mean Select rather than RO4, but I doubt if any Iyonix owners will agree with you. You don't survive by looking nice, you survive by delivering on your commitment to your customers. RO5 users have got an OS that runs on the fastest and most flexible RISC OS hardware and is being continually developed via mainly free updates, and very reasnable priced upgrades for additional hardware functionality.

Where as if Iyonix owners were relying on ROL (assuming they even decided to support the largest user base of post Acorn machines), they'd have been paying £100 a year for the past two years for absolutely sod all, and being told to stump up some more cash for promised features which are available "any day now", but no one has even seen a demo of.

If anything is going to die off, its going to be the Select subscriber base and hence ROL, as you can't expect people to put up with this sort of nonsense with all the compelling reasons to just walk away from the RISC OS platform. There are a lot of good features in Select which are currently being wasted through lack of developer support being restricted to a small proportion of the userbase, and they are going to be lost forever if ROL go under. There is no way the complex tangle of IP rights and opaque management of ROL will ever make it a viable proposition for Castle or anyone else to rescue.

But this isn't a case of weather Select or RO5 is going to win, its more a question of it there is going to be anyone left to care.

thegman wrote>"I was just thinking that ROL need to make a compelling reason to buy Select on Iyonix, and making it the only way to get Cineroma would probably ensure a lot of Iyonix users get Select"

So in short you're saying without Cineroma a lot of Iyonix users would have no compelling reason for Iyonix users to get Select ?

The *sad* part in that statement is the virtual admission that Select offers *little* and would need a 3rd party app *deliberately limited to run on it alone* in order to make Select "compelling". You'll find that the biggest impediment to Select on Iyonix is it's non-existance.

As to whether either one other or both streams should survive - its probably of lesser consequence than if applications developed on either can run on *both*. The only thing by right that should prevent any given bit of software from working are the *hardware limitations* of the particular RISC OS machine it runs on - not some deliberate "nobbling" of the software to exclude a specfic group of RISC OS users.

timephoenix wrote "Personally I would like to see RO5 die off, not because I dislike Castle, but I think it has less marketable features than RO4. Sure, there's stuff you can't do on RO4 you can on RO5, but at least it looks nicer and there'd be one OS on all machines. "

Well thanks for wanting to take away *MY CHOICE* to use the OS of my choice.

As to looking nice - yes if that's *ALL* that matters then why not just give WindowsXP a RISC OS theme and have done with it.

Your choice is Style or function - and I'd choose function every time. Having a "rounded" button to me appears somewhat less important than being able to do fast UDMA disk transfers and the like. But unlike you I'd not wish to limit *YOUR* choice - so persist with RO4 if you wish...

@druck
LOL. I didn't even realise my camera had a red light on the front until I played back the video. The mouse is a cheap one, and I was getting quite good at Lander a while back but didn't want a three hour video of me playing it.

@md0u80c9
Scrollwheel support is an emulation feature, implemented cleanly with a support module. higher resolution screenmodes are also supported.

There are cool things such as not necessarily having to reboot when changing network settings, better png support, possibly being able to auto detect a monitor and possible automatic recognition of NASs.

Couldn't somebody *please* do an unbiased feature list so that RO5 owners can see if it would be worth it?

Its pointless doing a list to convince RO5 users to move to Select, they don't have the choice, and wont have the choice until ROL release Select for the Iyonix - and its still a big if given their total lack of commitment, and frequent back peddling on the issue.

Of course when/it it does happens, Iyonix users will have to weigh up the benefits of the features such as ROHC mentions, against the level of support they may receive from ROL when any problems arise, as Castle wont be able to help once you are no longer using RISC OS 5.

Back when Select first launched, and I was receiving new betas on a weekly basis, I would have had no hesitation about crossing that bridge, as I was confident that the development team could respond to issues promptly. But with ROLs record of the past few years, and the length of time its take for a few minor fixes to be completed on the A9Home, I certainly wound not want to start using Select again, only to have to wind back to RO5 because bugs remained unfixed.

It seems unfair to complain about "the length of time its take for a few minor fixes to be completed on the A9Home" when bugs in RISC OS 5 have still not been addressed more than three years after the Iyonix PC was launched.

Also, given that the A9Home's OS is significantly different from other versions of RISC OS (and apparently under active development), there may be more than meets the eye to problems that look like they could be solved by "minor fixes".

Enough what has changed? There haven't been any Select releases since May 2004, and we certainly aren't going to count things written on a folded piece of pink A4 paper - not until they are up and running as part of a stable release.

ROHC:
Whilst Adjust 32 gives us plenty "up and running as part of a stable release" to make comments additional to Chris' superb articles, he is probably waiting for the full Select 4 release before tackling the very tricky job of converting Technese into something that ordinary users can understand and appreciate.